In the taxi Freddie sat at one end of the seat and Jagua sat at the other extreme end. No talking
to each other. The taxi driver, with an eye to the entertainment of his passengers, talked about the political leaders and their latest disagreements, about the last football match between Nigeria and Libya. His conversation fell flat.
Jagua was not listening. Looking up for a moment she saw in the rear-view mirror the angry eyes of Freddie. She knew he must be angrier than ever because he had failed again to drag her up into the society of the snobs. Instead she had won. She was pulling him down to the Tropicana, trying to teach him to relax. You die, you’re dead, Jagua thought. It’s over. You’ve left nothing, not a mark. Freddie always resisted her own philosophy but she would go on trying.
When the taxi passed over the bridge she barely glimpsed the half-naked fishermen in the canoes on the flat lagoon. They had their sails out, so she guessed they must be fishing. Now, these fishermen did not worry about lectures, Jagua thought; and they were happy. She loved this hour when the lights were coming up in the causeway: white and blue and orange lights and the hotels and coloured adverts ablaze but not yet effective in the pale twilight.
The taxi rattled over a level crossing and pulled into the side of a road. She heard the trumpet shrieks from the Tropicana and felt genuinely elated. Jagua got out on the side of the road near the woman selling cooked yams. She stopped for a moment to straighten her dress, and the woman stopped blowing the fire and started looking at Jagua’s sheath dress, painted lips and glossy hair.
‘Heh! …’ the yam seller burst out. ‘One day ah will ride motor car and wear fine fine cloth …’
She said it aloud to Jagua’s hearing and Jagua felt her ego pumping up. She pulled Freddie across the road to the little hatch of a door and they went inside. The Tropicana to her was a daily drug, a potent, habit-forming brew. Like all the other women who came here, alone or with some man, Jagua was looking for the ray of hope. Something will happen tonight, this night, she always told herself.
The music was tremendously rhythmic, coming from the bongo drums, and the bandleader, pointing his trumpet skywards blew till the blisters on his lips widened and he wiped his lips, and the sax snatched away the solo, distorting it. This was it, Jagua felt.
All the women wore dresses which were definitely undersize, so that buttocks and breasts jutted grotesquely above the general contours of the bodies. At the same time the midriffs shrunk to suffocation. A dress succeeded if it made men’s eyes ogle hungrily in this modern super sex-market. The dancers occupied a tiny floor, unlighted, so that they became silhouetted bodies without faces and the most unathletic man could be drawn out to attempt the improvisation which went by the name High-life.
Jagua saw them now as with white collars off they struck a different mood from the British Council: the ‘expatriate’ bank managers, the oil men and shipping agents, the brewers of beer and pumpers out of swamp water, the builders of Maternity Block, the healers of the flesh. German, English, Dutch, American, Nigerian, Ghanaian, they were all here, bound together in the common quest for diversion. Bouncing off the roofs, Jagua heard the trumpet choruses from the adjacent club, reaching out to the Tropicana with a kind of challenging virility.
She glanced round but could not get herself a seat among the dozens of empty chairs. She wanted most to dance. ‘Take me Freddie. Take me and dance me, quick!’ She put down her handbag on a chair and offered him her arms. He still moped.
The band was playing a new hit tune from Ghana, good enough to melt away all anger, something weepy but rocking, the kind she knew Freddie liked. She rubbed his hand caressingly. ‘You still vex wit’ me?’ she cooed at him. ‘You still wan’ to go back and lissen to de ol’ man lecture? Come on, man! Forget de lecture. You young man, enjoy yousself!’
Jimo Ladi and his Leopards always played well, though rather loudly, but dance High-life must be loud to fire the blood. White men and black men, they all rose, and crowded the floor. The black men chose the fat women with big hips: the white men clung to the slim girls with plenty of collar bone and little or no waists. There were girls here, and women, to suit all men’s tastes. Pure ebony, half-caste, Asiatic, even white. Each girl had the national characteristic that appealed to some male, and each man saw in his type of woman a quality which inspired his gallantry. So the women enticed their victims and the Tropicana profited.
Jagua clung to Freddie and they rubbed shoulders and bumped hips against softer hips and knocked down cigarette-ends in the compression chamber they called a dance floor.
After the dance, Freddie went over to the bar, leaving Jagua for barely a moment. A Syrian gentleman came to Jagua’s table at once and covered it with lavish drinks. He was not a young man and he had the unsober looks of one who came to the Tropicana every night. Jagua had often seen him in the company of Mama Nancy. But tonight Mama Nancy was not in the Tropicana and she wondered what the Syrian was planning. He was said to have a lot of money and to be quite lavish with it, and she would not mind taking him home. On his invitation she helped herself freely to his cigarettes. She felt flattered by his admiring smile.
Freddie came back and threw her an angry glance. ‘Get up, Jagua, an’ let’s go!’ he scowled. He was all tensed up.
‘Why now, Freddie? Siddown and greet de gentleman,’ she said lazily. ‘We only jus’ come and he dyin’ to meet you.’
‘Le’s go home, I said.’ He glared at the Syrian who calmly offered Jagua another cigarette. Jagua took it. This was her bread and butter, she told herself. The Syrian’s money would buy her that new dress from Kingsway. She had already pictured herself in it. She loved Freddie well, but his whole salary could not buy that dress. He must understand that taking money from the Syrian did not mean she loved him less.
With the match-light catching the points of his chin and etching out the bushy eyebrows, the Syrian squinted and puffed his cigarette alight, offering Jagua the flame. Jagua smiled at Freddie. The Syrian smiled too.
‘I waitin’ for you, Jagua.’
‘But you never dance me enough, Freddie.’
‘We done dance finish. Le’s go home.’
Jagua turned a smiling face at the Syrian. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Freddie’s fist tighten. Then, raving mad, he turned and walked out of the Tropicana. At that instant Jagua forced back a small spark of pity for her loved one. He should know by now that in the Tropicana, money always claimed the first loyalty.
4
Freddie stood at the door of the Tropicana, shaking his shoulders to the bright High-Life which Jimo Ladi and his Leopards were weaving within. He toyed with the idea of returning but resisted it. Jagua’s behaviour within the Tropicana was one reason why he never liked bringing her here. Once inside, the lights, the influential people, the drinks, the flattery, the voluptuous stimulations, the music, all combined together to change her into something beyond his reach.
He became aware of a girl’s young body brushing against him, squeezing tight against the passage. Her voice excited him too. ‘Freddie, you seen me mother inside?’
He looked at her. ‘Nancy, what you doin’ here?’
‘Lookin’ for me mother,’ said Nancy sweetly.
‘I don’ see her inside. Wait! Don’ go yet! I wan’ somebody I kin talk to.’ He seized her wrist.
Nancy looked at him in surprise. Freddie knew why, but now he had no time to worry about that. He had always treated girls with indifference, and someone like Nancy must believe he was not interested in her.